In a Flash
by MissScorp
Summary: A flash is all it took for Barry Allen to figure out the answer to her million dollar question. One-shot. Set after Kryptonite. *Complete*


She asked him the million dollar question with a smile trembling upon her rosy lips and Snart firing off more ice blasts from his freeze gun behind them.

"Who are you?"

Ten minutes ago he would have lied to her by saying he was "_nobody special_." Ten minutes ago he would have told her simply, "_I'm the Flash_." Ten minutes ago he would have simply left her standing here under the awning of the new bistro that had opened up last week and gone back to figuring out how to stop Snart. Yet there was something that seemed to be compelling him to tell this woman the one thing that both Dr. Wells and Joe would be telling him _not_ to tell her: the truth.

"My name is Barry Allen..."

...

**Downtown Central City**

_Ten minutes ago._

Agent Raya Kean had dealt with an innumerable amount of bad guys in her long years working as not only a profiler for the Gotham City Police Department, but beneath the mask of her alter ego, the Fenix. Somehow, though, Leonard Snart managed to seem even more imposing than most of the rogues she tended to deal with in her part of the world. Part of that was because Snart wasn't the typical villain. He wasn't some masochistic clown, hell-bent on pushing Batman into breaking his one golden rule just for a laugh. Nor was he some genocidal maniac who wanted to burn the world to the ground in order to create his own personal version of utopia.

No, Leonard Snart was a much different sort of lowlife. He wasn't out to create a worldly paradise or to watch the world burn. No, he was out to cultivate his own financial gardens. And a ruthless man he might be, Snart was still a man of principle. He didn't kill simply because it made him laugh. _And that is what makes him a much more dangerous adversary than the Joker, Scarecrow or Ra's_.

She hadn't come to Central City because of Leonard Snart, however. She was on the hunt for one of her own missing rogues. A man fitting the description of Dr. Jonathan Crane had been spotted at the Central City train station two days ago. She'd immediately commissioned one of the unused Batplanes that Bruce had hanging around the Batcave and flew out here to Central City to investigate. Finding Crane and stopping him before he unleashed whatever diabolical plan he'd been concocting the last few months took precedence over everything else that was going on in the world at that moment.

_Where are you, Crane? _she silently wondered as she scanned the faces of the people who'd poured out of the various buildings in order to watch the showdown between Snart and their scarlet speedster. _Why are you playing this game of hide and seek with me?_ _What could you be planning that it requires this level of secrecy_?

These, as well as dozens of other questions and thoughts, raced through her mind at the same speed as the red blur dancing around Snart. Crane wasn't this secretive unless he was deeply involved in the development of yet another of his patented _Fear_ toxins. Crane had not been heard from since his escape from Arkham Asylum over five months ago. They had all believed him merely to be avoiding detection, laying low while he rebuilt his toxin and established the parameters for whatever new experiment he was about to perform on the city of Gotham.

When people started showing up in morgues across the country, all of them exhibiting complete shutdowns of the central nervous system following a prolonged fear response, they'd known the Scarecrow was back and again up to his bag of tricks. Three victims in Star City a week ago, two in Coast City two days ago, and now a reported sighting of the infamous Doctor all confirmed that the _Grand Master of Fear_ was making a West coast tour. Why? None of them had any clue.

_I will find you before you can hurt any more people__, _she promised the fiendish doctor silently_. And just like all the other times I have obstructed your inhuman experiments in the last ten years, I will prohibit you from completing this one, too._

Sometimes it amazed her how many years she and Crane had actually been doing this macabre dance with each other. He had become her Joker… much to both the clown's _and_ Bruce's displeasure.

"Charlie!" Raya heard a woman shout in a voice made shrill by fear. "Charlie, come back here!"

Raya swung her gaze to the left and felt her heart immediately stop. Time slowed to a crawl as she watched a small blond boy, all of maybe four or five, running on chubby legs towards where Snart was aiming his cold gun at members of the CCPD. Instincts honed over a very long apprenticeship kicked in, jerked open all the doors and allowed her to seamlessly make that shift from _Raya Kean_ into the _Fenix_. Every muscle in her body coiled for action. Every ligament bunched as she prepared to take flight. She might not be as fast as the man whizzing around Snart, but she had the speed necessary in which to get that boy out of the way of that ice gun.

And getting that boy out of danger was all that mattered to her at that moment. Her mind emptied of every thought, but that one. Every ambient sound became a muffled one. The only thing she could see was that small figure as he barreled down the street towards the man trying to encase the costumed man running circles around him in a block of ice. She sprang into flight at the same moment that Snart shot another stream of blue fire at the tornado twirling about his still form.

She counted the seconds in heartbeats.

One second for every footstep...

Five seconds for her to cover the twenty feet between her and the child unaware of the danger he was placing himself in...

Ten to grab hold of him and twist her body around in order to shield him from the blast streaking towards them as fast as a bolt of lightning...

And half a beat more to prepare herself for the worst, even as the man Snart was trying to shoot with his ice gun absolutely defied Newton's second law of motion by reaching them before it could. Raya felt the man gather her and Charlie into his arms, felt the wind scream by her as he zipped them to safety a bare blink of an eye before that icy current slammed into the side of a building, and couldn't believe it. Even as brick and mortar rained down around them like hail, she still couldn't bring herself to believe that she'd just been scooped out of the arms of Death by this man.

_Only Clark is _this_ fast_…

"You okay, Miss?" She dimly heard him ask over the buzzing sound in her ears. "Miss?"

Raya drew in a shaky breath and waited for her heart to stop slamming against her ribcage like a wild animal that had been caged before lifting her head and staring at her mysterious savior. Her first coherent thought was that his eyes reminded her of melted chocolate, warm and full of compassion. She estimated that he was about her age, maybe a bit younger. His face, what little she could see of it around the full cowl he wore, was smooth as a baby's bottom. There were faint lines around the corners of eyes and mouth that said he smiled, and often. Those eyes carried a pharaoh's tombs worth of secrets, hinted at a deeply buried pain, but lacked that world-weariness those who'd been crime fighters for any length of time tended to acquire.

She opened her mouth, was about to murmur her thanks when a woman came running up to them, her face white as a sheet and her hazel eyes bright with shock and fear. Raya handed the wriggling boy over to her, understanding exactly what the woman was feeling at that moment. It's what she'd have been feeling if her own nearly eight-year-old son, Christopher had been the one in danger.

"Charlie!" She cried as she clutched her son to her. "Oh, my God, Charlie!"

"Mama, he's real!" The little boy giggled, absolutely oblivious to the danger he'd placed himself in order to get close to his idol. "He's _real_, Mama!"

The grateful woman could only stare at their city's costumed savior while hugging her squirming son close. "I can see he's real," she said in a tremulous voice. "And I can never thank him enough for having saved you."

"It was my pleasure," the man replied with a smile that edged towards bashful. "Now, you should get you and Charlie somewhere safe."

The woman departed with a nod, disappearing into the crowd that only managed to grow larger the longer this epic showdown between their costumed hero and the man in the goggles and parka went on. The scarlet-clad hero looked again at Raya, the ghost of that smile still upon his lips and a twinkle in his eyes that made her think of her best friend and partner, Dick Grayson.

"You should get somewhere safe as well, Miss."

Raya was used to being in the heart of danger, however. She'd grown up in a city where the streets were treated like a chess board. The white pieces were the innocent denizens of Gotham while the black pieces were the criminals who wanted to knock over their Dark Knight and take control of the city for themselves. Plus, she was a Bat-brat. This was almost a vacation for her.

"Who are you?"

He blinked, clearly surprised by her question. His mouth opened and closed in that adorable way that Tim's did whenever she'd managed to catch him completely by surprise. He could have told her that now wasn't the time for twenty questions. He could have lied to her. He could have simply told her what his superhero name was. However, there was a flicker of something in his eyes that told her that something was compelling him into telling her the last thing she expected him to tell her: the truth.

"My name is Barry Allen..."

...

"... and an accident made me the fastest man alive."

"So," she mused. "You're the one that they are calling the Flash."

Barry opened his mouth to reply, but another blast from Snart's gun momentarily distracted him. "Yes," he finally said. "And I'd love to stay and talk, but I really need to stop Snart before he can hurt anybody."

"Actually, Mr. Allen." Her voice dropped an octave. "I think I can help you with stopping Mr. Snart."

"How exactly can you help me?" Barry found himself asking despite both Dr. Wells and Cisco telling him he needed to "hurry" in his ear. "You'll turn to ice the second that Snart shoots you with his freeze gun."

"Well, I just happen to be friends with a man who is faster than a speeding bullet." Her lips curved when his eyes blinked wide and his mouth dropped open. "Pretty sure Mr. Snart will have a hard time trying to stop the Flash _and _Superman."

* * *

**A/N:** Hello, m'dears…and welcome! Let's get the legal stuff out of the way … I own nothing but for Raya and any and all other OC's that you encounter. All canon characters are not mine, more's the pity, but will be returned in relatively like new condition once I am done playing with them.

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